all cable news is now fox news

I'm going to have to stop watching the 24-hour news channels if I'm going to remain sane through the next year. I am nearly in disbelief at the extent to which CNN has started to morph into Fox News. There seem to be only two sorts of stories: sensationalist breaking news and smirking contemptful advocacy. I just saw a white panic segment about Mexico "moderated" by (I am not making this name up) Kitty Pilgrim. The segment follows the structure that used to be isolated to Fox: frame it in terms of a predetermined judgment, smirk your way through the interview with the person representing the view of the opposition (but present the interviewee as a straw man), then end by commiserating with the second and final interviewee who simply validates the point of view of the interviewer.

An abbreviated example concerns the white panic of illegal immigration (i.e., poor people with a better work ethic than white Americans who are willing to work shitty jobs in order to help their families survive), specifically Vicente Fox's aggressive (progressive?) stance at trying to persuade American lawmakers not to build a giant fence across the border.
1. Kitty frames the issue as "shameless"
2. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes through an interview with a representative from a PR firm Fox hired, all the while asking questions in full panic attack mode. She fails to listen to a relatively complex and detailed argument about historical, economic, and social trends and structures.
3. She abruptly ends the first interview and goes straight to commiseration mode with an equally white-panic-oriented congressman and they shake their heads and perform outrage that a foreigner could dare tell America what to do (implying, I guess, that nations should not meddle in the affairs of other nations--which, of course, is even more ironic than the name Kitty Pilgrim).

In other news, Michael Bloomberg said this about the striking transit workers (who can only strike for a better contract by breaking the law): No one should be able to break the law in order to make personal gains. I'm glad he wasn't a leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

why is Bruce Willis after me?

the current miscellany:

1. Why is it that end of the semester grading brings out the worst procrastination in me? The level of aversion is unparalleled. Rather than simply replacing grading with time-consuming tasks like cleaning up my office or doing chores, instead I give a wholesale rejection to the task and replace it with doing nothing at all.

2. I had a dream the other night that Bruce Willis was trying to kill me.


3. It has finally gotten cold enough around here to wear a sweater!

4. I started reading The Ongoing Moment, by Geoff Dyer, yesterday and came across a line that I need to adapt and place somewhere in every future article that I submit for blind review:

I suspect, then, that this book will be a source of irritation to many people, especially those who know more about [name of subject] than I do. I'm sympathetic but, if we're to make any progress at all, there's one type of criticism I'd like to rule out of court straightaway. This is the 'But what about X?' or 'Why didn't he mention Y?' charge of inadmissible omission. Can we agree, in Whitman's words, 'that much unseen is also here', that it's not necessary to discuss--or even mention--every [instance of topic ever produced] in order to learn something interesting about [topic]? I hope so, because the person doing the learning is the person writing the book as much as the person reading it. The driver is along for the ride too. (7)

5. I've decided to remove all academic books from my nightstand. From now on it's reserved for fiction, Harper's, and the Utne Reader.

6. I love it when students get riled up and offer passionate comments without that sense of disinterestedness that masquerades as decorum in the classroom. I just wish it wouldn't all hinge on a wrongly interpreted passage.

7. It has been almost 4 years now since I last had a haircut (when I swore to myself I wouldn't cut my hair again until after I had obtained a tenure-track position). It has also been four years since I've written on topics that I know and care about, as opposed to trying to reinvent myself as what I think I need to be to get the t-t position.

8. I have a ton of grading to do today. I think I feel the need to do the laundry and the dishes and some yardwork instead. No, I absolutely promised that I would return these papers by tomorrow. But , I saw some algae on the wall outside and the dogs need walked (and probably bathed). I guess I could always get on the blogs . . .

she may not have a fancy name, but she's got mad skills

Thanks to Julie for her javascript tutorial and randomizer script! Now my blog's changing surface features can help make up for the lack of compelling content. Hooray!

Now I have 10 mastheads. Just reload the page to see another.

dr. m needs all the accoutrements

Seen at Scrivenings.

According to google, I need the following:

a bit more flesh
some juice
to feel loved
dependable adults in my life
open lines of communication
a neck massage
a loving single or two parent family who will accept me
to focus on new trends
close ups of the face that are well lit
to learn that there is a man for every condom
to go shopping
to lie down after two days in bed
to go on with my life
to understand that I will stand before Almighty God
photographs of both sides of the animal
something which is inventive and new
to work on my own now
to get back on the air
to discover and write my stories
to read more frequently
assistance in developing fast and accurate word recognition strategies
to just be a recluse for awhile
to obtain
to contact Eunice for more information
some Rustoleum
a job that keeps my mind busy
floorspace
free play time, too
another attorney to help me get on with this
a favor from a real estate developer
to go ahead and work
to feel safe and secure in order to ask for assistance
to calm down before NASCAR black flags me
help with my daughter who is being spoiled rotten
a strong male role model
it all
some good material to write about
no scientific basis for my work
a family that is consistent in its expectations
understanding and patience
to take this as a wake-up call
more athletic/play shoes
to change my image
a wife
to be spanked
to keep my fee consistent
all of the accoutrements
his rest
to pick up some milk
to become reacquainted with the world again
some expert help
24 hour monitoring
to be honored today, tomorrow, and always
your support

friday stencil blogging

wednesday sign blogging

wednesday door blogging

This is the point in the summer when my brain becomes all jelly-like and I feel it is best to just look at some pictures. These doors are from the Williamsburg (aka Hipsterville) section of Brooklyn.

wednesday graffiti blogging

nerdy feminist sex workers

Here's an intreresting article from indymedia about rich college students who are part-time sex workers ("hobby whores"). The rub (no pun intended) is that they pimp themselves over craigslist. One of the women in the story is a urine fetish specialist.

Here are some key moments in the story:

"They began with lower-caliber jobs like massage and run-of-the-mill cleaning. They soon realized that they could get away with quicker jobs if they only eroded their boundaries. 'It takes two seconds to pee on someone, and three more seconds to get their money and leave,' said Phoebe, the hardest part is pretending its normal for me to do it."

"Like 70% of the workers on the report, the girls want to abandon the business eventually for legitimate career plans. In the meantime their biggest fear is neither rape nor the police, but their parents. 'I dont care who knows it. In fact I kind of like talking about it,' said Phoebe,' 'But if my parents find out Im fucked."

bouillon de culture questionnaire

Since James Lipton will likely never interview me (nor will Will Farrell), I thought it was about time that I answered the questionnaire made famous by Bernard Pivot on Bouillon de Culture:

1. What is your favorite word?
Cattywampus.

2. What is your least favorite word?
Debt.

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
The need to experiment when I don't know an answer to something.

4. What turns you off?
The ideology of "paying your dues."

5. What is your favorite curse word?
Fuck.

6. What sound or noise do you love?
Ocean waves.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?
Car alarms.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Graphic design and/or starting an independent record label.

9. What profession would you not like to do?
Surgery.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
"First round's on me."

the secret wisdom of students

I love it when a student writes something seemingly simple which actually cuts through a lot of the denisty of theory and gets to the bright, shiny point. In the middle of an essay exam answer (about the relationship between rhetoric, the free market, globalization, and US power) one student tweaked the invisible hand metaphor this way: "the hidden (secret) hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist."

thursday penis blogging

Made you look!

hee hee

sunday anhinga blogging

Our street is a circle that runs around a pond that used to be used to water cattle on the way to the port before the neighborhood was built in the 1920s. Now, the pond attracts a lot of bird life.

thursday chicken blogging

rooster and ducklings, originally uploaded by dr. m.

This is our neighborhood rooster, Layne, tending to some ducklings this afternoon.

biography of phobias

The end of the semester seems like the perfect time to reflect briefly on my personal relationship with the world. What better way to do this than via the things that freak me out?

1. Fear: Choking on food. Source: I remember getting freaked out by choking after learning about it and the Heimlich maneuver in school. I used to dream both about choking and about not being able to Heimlich someone who was choking.

2. Fear: brain tumor. Source: In my high school Thanatology course (i.e., death and dying), we watched a documentary about someone with terminal cancer. I remember that the film was about a woman who had some sort of brain cancer. She had lost all of her hair and the side of her skull had caved in. The caved in skull freaked me out.

3. Fear: lightning. Source: I now live in one of the most active lightning areas in the world. When Yidg and I were on campus for the first time (getting IDs and all that) there was a storm and a professor was struck dead. People are struck dead every year. And we get a lot of sudden thunderstorms. You should see the frantic sprint I will take from car to front door when it is storming.

4. Fear: murky bodies of water. Source: there are two from my formative years. The first was the movie Jaws. This has to do with not being able to see the things in the water that will take a big bite of flesh off my body. The second one (another source of nightmares like choking) was what seemed like endless warnings in the 70s about swimming in ponds or lakes and getting caught in the underwater plant life and drowning. So, I guess this is two fears: drowning and getting eaten by aquatic wildlife.

5. Fear: being an untalented scholar. Source: the disparity between getting heaps of praise and high expectations in my graduate program and the reality of high volume rejections/mysterious requirements of blind review journal publishing. From this dissonance between praise and rejection, I have developed a fear of writing.

updated to add:

6. Highschool fear: herpes (pre-AIDS). Those sex ed classes freaked me out about herpes. Because it was permanent and painful and you had to wear it on your face like a badge of shame (and that was the good kind of herpes).

the medium is the message; or, whither the shame of formality?

Several people among our academic blogging group has expressed frustration at the gibberish shorthand of text messaging that has increasingly overtaken student emails that seemingly shoul dbe more formal. So, to extend the discussion, I submit the following email that I received today 2.5 hours after my final exam ended. It was sent, of course, by someone in the class who failed to show up.

Quoting a student who I think is in a position where formality is paramount:

"hello.

im sry to announce but i just realized this mornign that my early morning exam overlapped with yours, and i thought i would finish early and then come to take yours, but i didnt, and i didnt know wat to do, then i had to turn around and have an exam from 1-3 so i couldnt notify anyone. is there any way possible for me to make up this exam?? thank you so much for understanding."


I would like to add that the final exams scheduled at my time slot were only available for courses that met at 11:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, the only way I can see that there was a conflict is if the student was taking two courses that were scheduled at the same time (barring, of course, a teacher who decided to make up his or her own exam schedule).

If you don't have the time or energy to actually spell out full words (I will and always do forgive the occassional typo),. it becomes very hard to take you seriously. Sry dude, you need a bttr stry.

Scrivener makes my life easy

My Unitarian Jihad names are (depending on my overall mood):

The Broadsword of Mild Reason (good days)
The Atom Bomb of Moderation (bad days)

SOSSM and definition of kinesthesis

People visited my blog recently via the following searches:
#1 idiot
Kathy Acker
cops can't dance
emily durkheim (yes, the lesser known sister; she's about as famous as Jesus' little brother Gabby Christ)
micro burst weather
horsecock
lightning brand canning jars
kinesthesis (10 people came to me after searching for the definition of kinesthesis. I think that I will actually post a definition of kinesthesis below so that their searches are completed more efficiently).

kinesthesis n. 1. The sensation of movement in the body, sometimes referred to as "muscle sense." The perception of such sensations. The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau Ponty discusses this phenomenon as proprioception, or a perception of one's own body (as a distinct object of and for experience, thereby to be distinguished from the brute physical reality of one's own body that Gilles Deleuze calls "The Meat"). Also , kinaesthesia and kinesthesia. 2. ~ breakthrough n. the name of an academic blog that, to borrow a phrase from a blogging mathematician, is "not too thinky." Though the proper name of this blog was derived from a list of gibberish in a spam email, the author of this blog became smitten with the suggestiveness of the phrase and its implications for the possibilities of discovery and the pursuit of new paradigms of bodily movement and experience.

now the chronicle of higher ed is ripping me off

In early February, I wrote four posts that I called the "academic neuroses files" (see Willy Loman Syndrome for an example). Today, Professor Yidg shows me the March 4th Chronicle Review, in which a couple of hacks published a few "advanced symptoms for advanced degrees." I'm incensed! Such blatant theivery. And in the Chronicle of Higher Ed! Where is the outrage! The OUTRAGE!

Well, I think I've stumbled upon another academic neurosis, Original Spin: the obsessive, nearly paranoid need to try to take credit for coming up with ideas that have clearly been thought-up, rehashed, and recycled endlessly; well, certainly longer than you or I had even thought about being an academic. Sufferers will defend their false and faulty claim more vociferously than they will pursue actual original work, turning to the teachings of the Sophists, Self-helpists, and Spin-doctorists as a last-ditch effort to live up to the ultimate measure of academic success: being interesting. Original Spin is really a global malady, as it seaps into the afflicted's overall perceptual environment. Luckily, original spin is similar to the chicken pox, as nearly everyone will catch it at some point. Most people recover fairly quickly, with little scarring. Experts note that it's much better to catch it early in one's career than later on when it can be quite dangerous.

the stupidity of cleverness

Perhaps a lesson for Liberals is buried in the observations of Horkheimer and Adorno: "One of the lessons of the Hitler period is the stupidity of cleverness. How many were the expert arguments with which Jews dismissed the likelihood of Hitler's rise, when it was already as clear as daylight. [. . .] And in any case, according to the clever people, fascism was impossible in the West. Clever people have always made things easy for barbarians, because they are so stupid. It is well-informed, farsighted judgments, the prognoses based on statistics and experience, the observations which begin: "I happen to be an expert in this field," it is the well-founded, conclusive statements which are untrue."

Continuing, "The medium of traditional bourgeois intelligence, discussion, is in decline. Even individuals can no longer converse, and know it; that is why they have turned card games into a serious, responsible institution that calls on all their powers, so that although there are no conversations, the silence goes unheard. It is no different on the big stage. A fascist does not like to be spoken to. When others have their say, he takes it as an impudent interruption. He is impervious to reason because he recognizes it only in concessions made by others."

will to blogger

Ok, so the Nietzsche reference isn't really relevant here, but I'm trying to will myself back into action. My cold has gotten progressively worse over the past 4 days, so the only reasonable thing to do is to will it away at this point. I will start with something simple, the upcomig 10 songs shuffling on my iTunes:

Ghost of a different dream, by guided by voices
Army of me, by Bjork
Yanqui go home, by Camper Van Beethoven
This is New, by Wilco
Easy/Lucky/Free, by bright eyes
Bride and Bridle, by The Long Winters
Keep on Runnin', by Cat Power
Sweet Caroline, by Niel Diamond
Bad Mouth, by Fugazi
Champagne from a paper cup, by Death Cab for Cutie

[editor's note: Death Cab For Cutie, whose leader also leads The Postal Service, has a live EP coming out on Tuesday. Details can be found here.]

Being chronically late on the memes, I will provide some grossly abbreviated items.

Three Things I've Done that you probably haven't:

1. Taught philosophy at the Jet Propulsion Labratory
2. Made out with twins, at the same time
3. Read A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari 4 times

Three Things I Haven't Done that you probably have:

1. Seen Gone with the Wind
2. Owned a car in the past 10 years
3. Read Hamlet

I said a while back that I've set up a system for playing vinyle records through a preamp and a mixer and into my computer. I've been converting all of these 7" singles I've gotten with indie music magazines into digital format so I will more likely listen to them. However, I've also converted some other strange things that I'll be able to use in my impending audio essay/performance for an upcoming conference (the piece will be about Bush and God and Voice and Machines). Recent audio additions from vinyl include a self-help record from the 50s, Earl Nightingale gives you the strangest secret; a biology/physilogy record that accompanies a plastic model of the human body, "The Talking Torso" (1968); and the Don Ameche version of "Co-Star: the record acting game--you act scenes oppopsite your favorite star" (1976). There are some great soundbites to be pirated from these gems for maximum auditory effect.

Anyway, I'm willing myself back to action. I hope to catch up on my blog reading, too. And I'll be skipping tomorrow's faculty meeting (hooray!)

#1 idiot

I just read this in the latest Harper's. One of the selections is titled Poetry Slams, and is a translation of three political poems published in North Korean literary journals. Here is my favorite, "#1 Idiot," by Youngbin Han (trans. Yunhee Lee):

Hey Bush,
You're famous, Mr. American President.
You're really an idiot.
Not just an idiot; you're a swanky idiot.

If they gather all the idiots under the sky
and have a contest to decide who is the real idiot,
then you should hurry and enter the contest.
I'm sure you'll win first place with no problem.

You know, idiots are usually thick-skinned
and don't feel embarrassment,
a sign that shows their stupidity.
So in this respect you are truly born stupid.

When you go to the ranch to rest for a month on a whim,
you are using the talent of yours
that no other idiots could ever have.
If there is a judge who doesn't know that,
he must not be a human from this planet.

Your greatest talent is
your audacity to start a fight with us.
Do you envy the audacity of the tiger moth
that flies into the fire not knowing
he's going to be burned to death?

There are so many different kinds of idiots,
but nobody will dare compete with you.
You have no equals
so you are surely the #1 idiot.
Ha, ha, ha, the #1 idiot is
President Bush of the U.S. now.

_______________________

Now, some parts of this poem are better than others. I welcome discussion, analysis, or critique. Personally, I thought that the "must not be a human from this planet" line was a bit sophomoric, and really did not further the rhetoric, imagery, or flow of the work. The big swinging dick moment (the fifth stanza) is also a weakness: the pissing match rhetoric reproduces the very idiocy that the author seems to be criticizing. Finally, I love the childish glee of the "ha, ha, ha" moment at the end. This is part of the poem that conjures a basic pathos of the temporary glee resulting from hurling an insult.

I'm sure that the those of you who are poets and literature professors might have something more substantial to add. And others, like the Bitch Doctor, may argue that Larry Summers or someone else deserves a fair chance at #1 idiot.

So, who should be nominated for the category of #1 idiot?

conversations with my dogs

Me: Stop eating your poop! That's disgusting!
dog eating poop: munch munch, pause, look at me, look at poop, take one more bite, walk away.

Me: stop barking like an idiot!
dog barking like an idiot: pause, grumble, grumble, growl, BARK . . .
Me . . .Sto-ahahahahp it, stopitstopitstopit!!
dog: looking at me like I am the one barking like an idiot, lies down on ground, sighs, looks at me, BARK BARK BARK!

Me (as dog is flailing around on leash): would you cut it out? please. you're embarassing me. Stop fucking around.
Me (remembering this dog is deaf): giving the sign for "stop fucking around" over and over.
dog (doing some sort of lunatic dog yoga): acting crazy, brief pause, quick stop, into crazy eyes, back and forth, into grab the leash with your mouth and shake with the might of entire body, stop, sit down, lick butt. Repeat.

Me (at 4am): what do you want? don't you dare try to tell me you are hungry. I mean it--go back to sleep!
Me (again remember this dog is deaf): arrrgh! wah wah wah! stop licking me. Ouch! you just scratch off half my face!
Me (after 20-30 minutes of this): OK, fine, let's go get your breakfast.
Me (5 minutes later): I can't believe you are sleeping like a baby--but could you please get off me?

Me: stop smelling me.
dog: sniff sniff, pause, head cocked to one side, sniff.
Me: I love you guys. ya bunch of weirdos.

Edited to be in memory of Lowkey, Dr. Gym-Partner's Great Pyreneese, who died today. We'll miss you, big guy

academic neuroses files (part four)

Ailment: Lookatmeitis
Manifestation: all forms of communication

Case Study: Subject starts a blog and then is very surprised to realize after only a couple weeks that he is worried if anyone is reading. Should there be more comments? Should subject be doing something to network and build relationships? Are people linking and blogrolling? Do they see how clever he (thinks he) is? Subject is not sure how to understand new information about self: he is needy for attention, or validation, or some kind of positive contact related (even if in pseudonymity) to others of his ilk. Nice blogger seems to take some interest, seeming to understanding subject's innate insecurities. He starts blogrolling others, gets a sitemeter, starts commenting to others, and is overwhelmed that he is starting to make some new writerly/readerly relationships with said ilk. Though he has trouble keeping up with and reading as many blogs as he wants to every day, he checks out a post by New Kid about the different kinds of academic blogs/bloggers, referencing a blogger whom subject has not yet stumbled upon. Subject follows a link to Arete, who (how fortuitous!) has recently written a post that is a guide for new bloggers, which follows a hilariously juvenile-mundane photo of found (anti-) art. Guidebook addresses blogging form of lookatmeitis and wisely reframes the ailment as a failure of practical communication. Subject is even more happy to see that sagacious veteran blogger is doctoral student in field very similar to subject's own. Subject appears to be less down of academy at present time.

Edited to apologize that I don't think I know how to do the trackback thing correctly, as evidenced by the link to "guide for new bloggers," which went nowhere when I checked it.

academic neuroses files (part three)

Ailment: Shit Midas Disorder
Manifestation: Publishing

Case Study: Subject believes that every publishing project he touches turns to crap. Ailment made acute presentation when subject received news that ambitious edited collection (the complete manuscript of which had been with excited acquisitions editor of major publisher for one full year) finally was rejected on the grounds that it "fell outside the scope of their general lists." Subject is further distraught/confused because reviews were positive. However, subject is getting all to used to strong reviews being coupled with rejections, which slowly takes toll on former joy at research and wanting to (to use the parlance of our time) "engage in discourse." Subject exhibiting some symptoms of Eggs in One Basket Disease, as he thought that payoff from huge amount of labor put into this project would take him one step closer to being viable as possible future candidate for possible tenure-track position in department he is indentured to. Also showing signs of Sour Grapes Disorder, making flippant and unreflective proclamations about the state of academic future. [analyst note: Real blame may lie with the inherent flaws of blind review process for humanities research, a journal system overburdened with increasing publishing requirements for tenure (and even for initial jobs), and a publishing structure that favors conservative research or brand name institutions or insider information or academic nepotism].

academic neuroses files (part two)

Ailment: Willy Loman Syndrome (formerly known as Hopeful Karma Disorder)
Manifestation: there will be a big payoff in the future if they like me

Case study: Subject (dr. m) has self-taught skills at web design and maintenance, obtained through reading source code and playing around with free trial html editing software before buying fancy web software studio. He cut his teeth on making websites for Dr. Yidg and Performance Artist Friend (both of which were given complete re-designs after skills were honed). Also made website for digital performance collective of which subject is a member. Having confidence, and hoping to score future favor with academic cohorts (a low percentage idea at best), subject has redone academic department's website, created website for tenured-colleague's institute, and (just this past week) coded and designed another tenured-colleague's media-rich essay for on-line publication. The latter turned out to be time-intensive tenfold of subjects original estimate (and, in humble opinion of subject, presents the essay in a way more interesting manner than prima facie content suggests). Subject, who has been toiling (thankfully and grovelinglily) as underpaid Visiting Instructor--benefits: yes; bonus and raises: no--thinks that such donation of creative and technological gifts will result in positive countergift [analyst's note: subject seems to be well-versed in, yet delusional about contemporary application of, research on gift logic by Mauss, Bataille, Derrida, etc., and thinks that moral reciprocity of countergift has now been put into play]. Though surface talk from "those in charge" has expressed effusive desire to secure more permanent academic job security for subject, the past three years have seen, in turn, no permission to search for a line, an unsucessful search for area unrelated to subject's work, and a possibly-successful search for other unrelated area. Subject, who attends all faculty meetings, has yet to hear anyone suggest a need for any position remotely related to subject's area(s) of expertise, yet somehow harbors hopes that an obscure non-grant-securing, humanities-based position will eventually (nay, magically) appear. Subject seems mostly unaltered in delusions, even after hearing early this day that probable ridiculously-high-paying non-university-alternative-job for-which-he-has-serious-insider-contact is "in a really slow period right now, so it doesn't look good." Subject appears slight bitter, but (inexplicably) remains hopeful that good things will come to those who are helpful, committed, and likeable. Analyst thinks subject is precious, and wishes the best for the poor bastard.

from the academic neuroses files (part one)

Ailment: chronic self-doubt
Manifestation: they must have made a mistake

Case Study: Subject (dr. m) has not been blazing a trail of publications, though many people have (had?) high hopes for him. Nevertheless, subject receives unsolicited email from editor of an exciting international on-line journal saying subject's name was given to him as a good person to place on journal's editorial board. Sceptically, subject goes to journal website to find list of editorial board members, where he spots the name of his dissertation advisor and several well-knowns, such as Judith Butler. Surely there has been a mistake. But, subject writes email and attaches CV (as requested) accepting the honor of serving on this board. Chronic Self-Doubt (CSD) sets in further when, one week later, no other contact has been made from editor (saying something like "welcome on board"). Subject's conclusion is that mistake in fact has been made (the realization coming after editor sees CV) and that editor hopes that subject will simply forget this little email exchange ever happened.

brought to you by the letter F

From The Future Dictionary of America:

fauxkward adj. combination of "faux" and "awkward." Falsely awkward. Qualities such as false humility, fake shyness, and pseudo-goofballness can all be termed subclasses of fauxkwardness. Most often seen in stammering movie actors (Hugh Grant, when not playing a baddie) and not-really-klutzy actresses (Julia Roberts, when playing anyone, including herself), but possibly also seen in alleged world leaders (Bush II, when reading his script very carefully).

floorganization n. the use of the lower inside surface of a hollow structure for the arranging and stacking of paperwork.

Froon's Law n. a mathematical equation that reduces to quantitative certainty the desirabilty of any micro- or macroeconomic activity. Also known as the Unified Theory of Enough. Revolutionary for its harmonizing of free-market growth and innovation with sustainability and equitable wealth distribution, Froon's Law accurately determines the point at which the opportunity for profit ceases to be a constructive agent of innovation and becomes instead destructive in social, environmental, or other terms. [blogger's note: this definition is abridged, as it carries on for another full page about Holistic Quantitative Tables, Elementary Rapacity Coefficients, twig-and-berry mines, long blond moustaches, and a global Culture of Enough]

anonymous public art (cops can't dance)

When living in a city, it is always nice to see space used for public art. But the public part of public art is often too tied up in political decision making or too representative of local power (as opposed to local publics). This is why I have become increasingly fascinated with anonymous public art--art that has neither benefactor, nor permit, nor commission. I first took notice of this while visiting friends in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn (1st Brooklyn Stop on the L train from Manhattan). You know how kids often tie old pairs of shoes together and then launch them onto power lines and phone lines? Well, that's what I noticed in Williamsburg, except someone had been making shoe-shaped plywood cut-outs, painting them in all forms of elaborate sneaker designs, drilling holes and lacing them together, and then flinging them up on the power lines: small, colorful, public statues dangling 25 feet above the ground. What interested me was that a mundane cultural activity had been transformed into a subversive aesthetic one.

Also in Williamsburg there is a person who contributes to anonymous public art by transforming local detritus. This person picks up objects that have been left outside as junk, takes them away, and then proceeds to make paintings on the objects (boxes, signs, broken pieces of furniture, etc). The cool part is that this person then returns the completed painting to the spot in which it was originally found. Then, people will simply find paintings on junk sitting aroud the neighborhood. This person does sign his or her work with a one-word name, but I don't remember what it is.

I always thought it would be a good writing project to pursue, but I've never figured out how to frame it or even how to proceed. Regardless, my interest was reawakened when I recently saw an odd-shaped painting attached to a traffic sign near my house. Someone made a painting on plywood, drilled holes in it, and bolted it onto the metal post holding up a speed limit sign. It has been there a month, and I hope to find more. The best thing is that it has gotten me conditioned to look for art among the streets.

I suposed most would consider graffiti to be anonymous public art, and I do as well. For some reason that seems like almost a canonized form, and has given me less interest. Nevertheless, I want to share a favorite piece of simple graffiti that I've seen on my weekend bike rides through the city. Near a run-down bar, whose sign advertizes "best booty in town," there is a nondescript red door on a nondescript yellow building where someone has written "cops can't dance." It cracks me up every time I see it.

---

I just picked up some food at the Chinese take-out place around the corner. I love the sentiment expressed on a hand written sign on the counter: "have nice every day"

From The Future Dictionary of America
media feed n. a bland, flavorless mush; easy to swallow, hard to stomach.

to do list: make to do list

I wanted to be sure to get in one last post on my first month of being a blogger. I think it is helping me quite a bit. Though I haven't been doing much academic writing, the blog has the old writing desire finally starting to rekindle. All those old essays and half-completed ideas are starting to flow. Hooray!

Also, I hope this doesn't sound corny, but this little academic blogging community often feels more like a helpful, hopeful, fun, angry, loving, joking, working, supportive community than where I am in most of my other life.

I hoped to write a better entry than this, but I cut one of my typing fingers right on the typing part. I was digging a hole with my bare hand in the garden, so I guess I brought it on myself. I know, I know, to be so lucky to be in the garden in January probably doesn't get me much sympathy.


OK, so here's my to-do list of things to write about in upcoming blog entries:
a list of jobs I've had
my interest in anonymous public art
my relationship with all the ideas in my dissertation
an ocassional political column (or politics meets pop culture)
indie music I'd like to plug
movie reviews if I ever see a movie again (next one on the shelf is the 1986 documentary Sheman's March)
my service-learning class and their yellow bike project

From The Future Dictionary of America

hyperchondria n. the state of feeling physically sound; an experience of total, thorough well-being, in which one has no physical or psychological complaints; a condition in which one feels superhealthy or superfine; an overabundance of health; in extreme cases, hyperchondria may indicate delusion, but the person will not want to acknowledge the problem. [I wish this on most of us in the psychic meat grinder of academe, but especially to new kid, just tenured, lucyrain, and others just trying to get through each day]

[And this one I dedicate to bitch, phd (because it exhibits her moxie]:
horsecock 1. adj. unnecesarrily large, to the point of being vulgar and unseemly. Steve insisted on driving his horsecock SUV throughout the gas shortage. 2. v. classless overcompensation. To make sure he acquired the autographed flak jacket, Donald horsecocked his initial bid at the charity auction.

acceleration + fatigue = kinesthesis breakdown

iPod as life metaphor
I always need at least 2 more hours to become fully charged.
I never have the right playlist when I need it.

the more I work, the more I feel behind on work
Why do I feel like such a slacker when I did all of this over the past 2 days?:
-work out at gym
-interview bottle diggers
-create a reading list on public memory for independent study student
-create entire schedule for service learning class campus yellow bike project
-and contact lists and group tasks for them as well
-update my Blackboard sites
-fix grades that were screwed up last semester
-take 30 minute nap
-do some blogging (more commenting than posting)
-attend dinner party for student who defended dissertation
-attend campus performance (politics meets art meets theater meets narrative)
-search out super-cheap DAT tapes for audio work
-create website (including six pages and seven images) for good friends' lesbian wedding
-buy more coffee beans from local roaster

It's because I didn't work on revising an essay I've been sitting on forever.
It's looking at me right now. All smug and superior. And inadequate.

where do they put it all?
My next door neighbors have an obsessed relationship with Ethan Allen. That big EA truck seems to be outside our house at least once a month. How much furniture can someone buy, anyway?

TV shows I watch whose central characters are women
Veronica Mars
Gilmore Girls
Alias

other shows I watch
Lost
Six Feet Under

favorite shows of all time
Northern Exposure
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The X-Files

TV show wish
That the Coen Brothers make a show for HBO

and . . .
(From The Future Dictionary of America)
condoleese n. a dialect of American English characterized by extremely precise enunciation, a highly specialized vocabulary, and the intention to deceive or obfuscate.

ineffable adj. 1. impervious to sexual intercourse. 2. not to be solicited for sexual intercourse.

irregardless adv. as of 2046, still not a real word, despite continued usage by basketball coaches. Basketball shorts, by the way, have gotten very small and snug again.

rumsfeld n. one who can stomach casualties.

electric bitters, electric joy

Just returned from the second part of our interview with the bottle diggers (radio documentary project). The whole time we talked to these guys (two brothers), they were digging a trench, sifting through the remains of an old city trash dump in use from 1895-1910, and pulling out all sorts of collectible treasures: bottles, marbles, pottery, porcelain, and glass syringes. It seems that the local doctors all made their own medicines, which were put in their own embossed medicine bottles. They were quite excited to find a few rare pieces: a sealed case gin and a bottle of electric bitters. These two diggers have done this for a couple of decades, and are part of a local amateur archeological society. Each brother has his own particular type of bottle that he collects (one miniature whiskeys, the other soda bottles in the "torpedo" style), and they are able to fund their own collections by selling most of what they find on their digs. Apparently, if you can find bottles that are cobalt blue, they are sure-fire sellers because ordinary collectors like to put them in their windows.

It was really great to be around the rhythm and excitement of the dig, and to see the digger's face light up with hope and joy when a bottle would emerge from a shovelful of century-old trash.

the vanity of self-disclosure

Movies or Albums I'm supposed to like but can't stand:
1. Citizen Kane
2. Thriller (Michael Jackson)
3. It's a Wonderful Life
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Anything by Jimmy Buffet or the Eagles


Movies I've never seen and don't intend to
1. Gone With the Wind
2. Annie Hall
3. Serpico
4. 12 Angry Men
5. Rosemary's Baby
6. Ben-Hur
7. Fantasia
8. The Pianist
9. Patton
10. Rocky Horror Picture Show

the hidden beauty of the news

Looking through the headlines of today's paper, by removing them from any context I can glean several phrases that would make good band names, poem titles, or secret government operation names:

Baby no. 81
virtual campaign
meatpackers face
festival stampede
food inquiry
last digs
discrepancy remains
kumquat blondies
everyday exotic
king of frozen egg rolls
sizable expectations
versatile grizzlies
belligerent prisoner
drunken robbins
define "member"
couples drop
seal incites debate
return to arms
stricter dress
surprising analysts

This would be a fun exercise for a creative writing class if each student had draw one of these phrases out of a hat and write a poem, story, or causerie based on their random title.

i can't stop myself

more future dictionary entries:

puritangential adj. a form of argument used to obfuscate an important issue by diverting attention to an irrelevant one.

pulling a Lieberman v. [slang] to covertly run for office on the opposition ticket.

finally, the word I've been looking for for over a decade:

yidg n. one's romantic pair; older than a boy/girlfriend, less businesslike than a partner, more fun than a spouse, less gooey than a lover. Don't even mention "significant other."

journaleach

Another entry from The Future Dictionary of America:

journaleach n. the process by which the significance of an event or events is drawn out or emptied by excessive coverage in the print and broadcast media.

riding with Kathy Acker

Back when Dr. Partner was Partner, M.A., we attended an interdisciplinary conference at Duke University (she to present, me to see what conferencing was all about). Most of my favorite times related to conferences happened at this one, and all of my conference encounters with famous others happened there (except for the time that Ray Charles was staying in the hotel where a region conference was being held. Anyway, I don't think that my field has produced anyone actually famous). Anyway, here is the funny or memorable stuff that happened:

Graduate students picked us up at the airport (the conference was on campus, but the hotel was sort of far away). I don't know if they were supposed to pick us up (we being brand new doctoral students ourselves), but we somehow got lumped together with this postmodern novelist named Ronald Sukenick. He insisted that we be taken with him, as we were oblivious to who he was and the grad students were fawning all over him (in a rather gratuitous and embarrassing way). We kept running into Ron and he kept insisting that we stick with him and drink together.

Another strange author named Mark Amerika kept trying to hit on Dr. Partner.

Frederic Jameson bummed a smoke from me [I have been totally smoke-free for several years now], grunted at me, ripped the butt off of the smoke I gave him, and crankily sulked around.

The only person whose work I was closely familiar with (Michael Hardt) was there. He was so kind and generous as a respondent/discussant that I vowed to be that way with young scholars if I ever made it through my program.

On the last day, having missed a makeshift shuttle full of "lesser" conference participants, I was sitting outside the hotel despondent and bored. A grad student chaufeur pulled up to get his charge, a spunky, gritty, short-haired woman. Much to the chagrine of the fawning, star-struck grad student, Kathy Acker asked me if I wanted a ride in to campus with them. We chatted all the way in, making people-observations and joking around, while the litearture grad student tried in vain to ask critically astute questions about the author's work.

The insight I gained riding with Kathy Acker is that I never want to be someone who people suck up to. I think that Acker, like Sukenick, liked being met conversationally as an interesting person, not as an important author.

paradoxysm

From The Future Dictionary of America:

paradoxysm n. a sudden attack of understanding that allows you to hold sparring statements in your mind without feeling like you have to choose one side over the other (white/black) (wrong/right) (briefs/boxers). Instead, you are seized by the pleasure of ambivalence, of entertaining two well-founded ideas at the dinner table you've set in the middle of your small but capacious heart.

serendipitus populum

I love serendipitous connections among popular culture that arise unexpectedly through conversation. For example, jo(e) posted a comment to me in which she mentions Lucy from Peanuts, and a famous scene about dog germs. In hopes of finding a copy of the strip online somewhere, I do a search that lands me on one of those great quotes websites. There happen to be several quotes from Lucy Van Pelt (classic characters of American Literature??), including the following that gave me pause: "I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong." Clearly, it seems to me, Charles Schultz was more than a simple cartoonist. This quote from Lucy is too close to the sentiments of the current president to be anything short of prophetic. I suspect that careful (no, meticulous) study of the panoply of Peanuts cartoons will reveal that Schultz is the American Nostradamus. Are we, the American public, the Charlie Brown to GWB/Lucy's snickering confidence game football-puller-away-er? Has anyone yet written Political Science According to Peanuts?

tongue theory

Tongue Theory (well, proposition): When waking to the experience of a tongue on and in one's mouth, it is better that the tongue belongs to one's partner than one's dog.

Tongue Law: it usually belongs to the dog.

the stuff beneath the city

So, Dr. Gym-Partner and I went to the antique bottle show yesterday to sniff out some informants/interviewees. Like countless other collecting cultures, it was basically a flea market for expensive old junk. We met several collectors and dealers of antique bottles, and discovered that there are two ways into the business. There are those who buy their bottles and those who go outside and find them. We want to talk to the people who go out and find bottles. What a strange hobby: digging through old trash dumps. Perhaps the most surprising thing for me was to find out that these dump-diggers can find so many old bottles (phamacist bottles, liquor bottles, canning bottles, soda water bottles). Also surprising are the varieties in size, shape, and color. We met one digger who sells his finds so he can afford to buy torpedo bottles (round-bottom soda-water bottles that were designed that way to stay on their sides, keeping their corks moist during long overseas shipping journeys). I had no idea there was all this stuff beneath the city.

But under the city isn't the only place one can find old glass. We met another guy who told us that there are two kinds of bottle hunters: diggers and divers. This guy's hobby is diving in rivers, where he routinely finds Civil War-era beer bottles (I think he called it Three Piece Ale), "new" bottles from 1910-20, and the ocassional French wine bottle from the early 19th century. As he read the surprised look on my face (how do you know where to look?) he summed up his theory. "As long as people have been drinking," he siad, "they've been drinking by the banks of rivers."

We plan to starting getting interviews this week--the sounds of shovels digging and cars driving by should produce a nice ambience for the stories of these modern day treasure hunters, these local archaelogists of the junk trade.

skanky modernist

I woke up a while ago with this lingering visceral dream-fragment of someone screaming at me that I am "nothing more than a skanky modernist!" Part of me hopes they are right.

dig it

In just a little while I'm going with Dr. Gym-Partner to an antique bottle show. We learned about the show last weekend while riding our bicycles through the city. We saw two men digging a big hole in someone's yard, so , naturally, we stopped to ask them what they were doing. Turns out that the neighborhood was built over an old 19th century dump, and the two were digging for old bottles. Letting the guy talk more, as he showed us an old hand-blown gin bottle, we found out that there was a local club of bottle diggers and a bottle show (I guess they sell them to collectors) this weekend. Anyway, Dr. Gym-Partner and I decided that it would be a fun project to make an audio documentary about Urban Bottle Digging. And collector cultures are always a fascinating hoot, anyway.

I'd love to play this topic off of jo(e)'s interest in urban nature and literature. The beauty that awaits beneath the urban surface. From dump to lawn to treasure trove.

the root of my uncertainty

As I've been roasting away my winter veggies, I realized that there is one in the mix that I am having for the first time: the rutabaga. Realizing I do not know how long said root should roast, I tried consulting the world famous researcher, Google. What it returned to me was more than I could hope for. Did anyone know that there is an organization called The Advanced Rutabaga Studies Institute (see here)? I wonder if they offer post-docs? Maybe in the literature and rhetoric of the rutabaga, the economics and geography of rutabagas, or trends in rutabagativity? There truly is a niche for everything.

Blackboard iTunes Shuffle Hour

In an attempt to do blogger correctly, I am taking a break from working on my classes' Blackboard sites to report on the current status of my iTunes shuffle-mode next 10 songs.

now: Off With Your Head (Sleater-Kinney)
2. Song for Kelly Huckaby (death cab for cutie)
3. Superhumans (The flaming lips)
4. Take you on a cruise (Interpol)
5. Evonce (Thelonius Monk)
6. The View (Modest Mouse)
7. The Sutcliffe Catering Song (Pavement)
8. Broadway (Old 97's)
9. The Ids are Alright (Guided by Voices)
10. Can't Stand it (Wilco)

BTW, for those of you keeping score at home, I finally have the winter vegetables roasting away in the oven. I probably have enough for 8-10 people, though. Those damn winter vegetables are huge. I fully plan to grill the lambchops, too.

spam poetry, part one; or, cartographic profit

Have you ever looked at those spam emails full of gibberish text? Usually they accompany solicitations for reduced mortgages, cheap software, erectile dysfunction medicine, and horny housewives. Well, embedded in the randomly-generated gibberish that is meant to elude spam blocking software is a hidden treasure trove of poetic utterances. These 2-4 word phrases continually evoke (for me at least) insightful concepts or poem titles. I took the name of this blog from one of these. Here is a short list of great spam poetry that I hope to use in a generative manner at some point:

circular ethos glass
art predisposition
carcinogen hideaway
arisen mediocre
upstart emigrant denunciation
kinesthesis breakthrough
befogging feminism cheesecake
orthodontist teet
chimpanzee fieldwork
newlywed still leeward
fried bourbon
persuasion bootleg
atrocious pinscher cutlet
cruddy oneupmanship clause
hermes lichen confidante
doorkeeper network
tansy inventive hymnal
glasgow taxicab
querulous rapture standby
gastrointestinal corporate fort
cutesy puny pepsi tomatoes
eighth handyman
cartographic profit
escalate dogmatism
comrade catalogue

orion through the live oak

Urban living usually cuts me off from some of the simple joys of nature. The little, unexpected ways that nature asserts itself become these precious image-moments. As I had coaxed my thin-blooded dalmatian outside with a biscuit--to use the bathroom on a chilly night--I looked up, and saw framed in the moonlight, Orion through the live oak.

meticulous slacker

I keep finding evidence to support my claim that I have mild cases of both OCD and ADD, the result of which makes me meticulously unable to follow through on my plans. Today, for example, I was like a failed version of profgrrrl. I planned to grill lambchops with cilantro-mint sauce and roast some winter vegetables. Then, wash it all down with a nice micro-brewed IPA. Instead, it was frozen pizza and a can of Miller.

the fragile academic psyche

I can't believe how lame I am. I check my blog more often to see if anyone has posted a comment than do I log on to post something new. This must be some deep need for a relationship to readers that is as different as possible from editorial boards, list serves, and others in the real axis of evil. Again, though, the whole internal point of blogging for me is to free myself from obsessiveness and paranoia about writing. (the external point is to join this strange community of anonymous academics who I am surprised to find myself caring more about than most of the colleagues I share a hallway with).

wicked randomness

I was thinking about blogging today, and about what to write (reminding myself that I will never allow this to become another stressful writing situation), and then I saw jo(e)'s post about underwear and the unique venue a blog provides, and the wicked randomness of blogging topics. In jo(e)'s case, the silly randomness of bra-ordering (in several senses) gave way to a somber and hopeful reflection. The message I ultimately came away with was to just let fly with the randomness while blogging. I can order my thoughts, like jo(e)'s bras, when I'm damn well ready.

So,

A kid I knew in university, who looked like a young Elvis, is running for chair of the DNC. (and I'm still shooting for tenure-track. Not tenure, but tenure-track).

I just got the two new Bright Eyes CDs in the mail, before they hit stores next week. I'm strangely impressed with myself for always being one step ahead of alternative college chicks, musically at least. Yes, I saw Iron & Wine before they were on the Garden State soundtrack and Death Cab for Cutie before they were on MTV-U.

Every time I go to the gym (three times a week with colleague/friend), MTV-U is on, and they only have a rotation of about 15 songs.

At the gym, I am stunned at the freakish strength I now have (perhaps the Samson hair???), as I can bench press over 10 times my age in weight (pounds).

Why do dogs like to eat cat poop? Why do I let something that eats cat poop lick my face?

One of our dogs is deaf. She knows tons of hand signs. It is so funny how she will refuse to look my way if she doesn't want to "listen" to me.

My non-smoking Mom had half of one of her lungs removed this past Spring due to a tumor. They found it when she was x-rayed for arthtritis in her shoulder. My sister's ex-smoker fiance started chemo and radiation yesterday for stage 3 lung cancer. They found the tumor after it pinched a nerve and paralyzed one of his vocal chords. Please do all self-exams regularly.

I saw a duck in a tree last night. And a rooster lives in my neighborhood.

I wish I knew someone who had tivo--I want to know if it's worth it.

I had to take partner's titanium powerbook G4 to the Apple store for service--the hard drive won't mount. The people who work service at the Apple store have the best job title: Mac Genius.

Half of my department are partners. No, that sounds wrong. There are four pairs of romantic couples in my department, and that accounts for half of the department. Yes, but doesn't it sound wrong anyway?

This new Bright Eyes album (I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning) sounds great so far.

I need to create some descriptive yet cute code names for partner, colleagues, and others in my life.

The Chinese take-out place around the corner from our house gave us one of those Chinese retaurant calendars over the holidays. How kitcshy!

I don't like to plug brands either, save one exception: John Fluevog Shoes.

What's funny is that I swear there was all this other stuff I intended to write today. I was just thinking about it earlier while walking our dogs.

baptism by fire

That's how the semester has gotten underway. The first week ended with our faculty meeting to choose which candidate to make an offer to. Worst case scenario was theme for the day. First, the vote was a tie. Then there were harsh words levied, feelings hurt, non sequiturs flitting around like blackflies, colleagues being assholes, veiled threats, power plays, and a defector from the "good" side thinking he could save the day (somehow, save the day by leaving his compatriots flapping in the proverbial breeze).

Now, it's time for week two. Guess what? There's another faculty meeting on Friday. This time to decide on offers of graduate student admissions and fuunding. How many hopes and dreams will be dashed because of a polarized, warring faculty? I may sneak in a video camera. Perhaps there's a market for Scholars Gone Wild videos.

hiring day

I'm off to my department this minute to attend a faculty meeting. The agenda is to make an offer to one of the people we interviewed this week. What a long and tiring first week. When is Spring Break?

the academy, my delilah?

Before the start of the 2002 Spring semester, I went to a place like Supercuts and received a close-cropped $8 cut in about 4 minutes' time. In the second semester of a Visiting Instructor (= more classes and less pay) position, I made a vow to myself, a pact of the will. I announced to my partner (tenure-track in same department, and really the only reason I had a position at all--so what reason do I have to bitch and moan anyway) that "I will not cut my hair until I have a tenure-track position!"

It has now been three years since I've had a haircut. Many of you will be impressed that I have been diligent in its care, using all sorts of long-and-curly-hair-specific shampoos and conditioners. During this time, my reputation among the students has grown and I've begun to find the return of my writing voice. Like Samson, is my vow the key to my power? Is the academy my Delilah? Will giving myself over completely to the academy result in a betrayal. Will I end up having my eyes burned out with hot pokers, chained to a grist mill? Is that what I want so badly?

OK, so that's a bit dramatic. I guess my point is that these little superstitious choices can take on a narrative life of their own, spinning into the fabulous, the ridiculous, or the comic.

who knew?

I definitely feel nerdier. I must have messed up on the test somewhere (how nerdy is that concern?)

from the pet peeve files

I don't know why this drives me nuts as much as it does, especially since I subscribe to the belief that pragmatics, usage, and understandability are more appropriate ways to judge language than by rigid, formalized rules. But, I hate it when someone writes (it bothers me more on page/screen than in speech) that he or she is going "to try and do something." The conjunction is unwarranted and nonsensical. Rather, people are going "to try to do something."

the silly things we do

If any of you readers are psychologists, or psychoanalytic literary critics, maybe you can tell me if I'm trying to transfer responsibility from myself by using the royal we in my title. Just like I made my previous post all about me (relationally) while claiming that it was all about everyone else.

I just sent a mass email to my class, regarding a room change, and used the date "Tursday."

A student looking for a directed study told me he was interested in studying Emily Durkheim.

I'll tell you later about my pact involving hair and the tenure track.

one down

OK, I made it through the first full teaching day of the semester. What I usually thought was a day all about me turned out to be a day all about everyone else: scores of students wanting to add into my classes, a few special needs students, two TAs who are (understandably) intimidated to address a group of 150 students, two dogs needing to be walked and fed and played with and loved, nervous job candidate making it through the second day, second job candidate needing picked up at airport, several colleagues wanting the full scoop on candidate two after my rush-hour car trip with her, phone call to little brother in marriage falling apart (yes, wife not letting you see your little kids since before Xmas is not cool; no, sharing apartment with other separated woman is not cool). 15 hours of stress. I need to sleep: tenured colleague/buddy/workout partner picking me up at 7:45am for trip to gym before next job presentation, meeting with TAs, course preparations, dinner with job candidate, and (finally, hopefully, desperately) some TV time with Lost and Alias.

and, they're off!

I hit the ground running today, as Spring semester aught-five commenced. I was on campus for most of the day, and was able to complete all syllabi, make all copies, start to organize my Blackboard sites, chit chat with most of my colleagues, and take care of departmental business. I didn't make it to the rec center, though. I figure I can give myself a little grace period for figuring out a solid working (out) schedule.

I need to start work on what I hope will be a wicked fun conference presentation. All of the panelists will create audio essays and audio responses to stock questions. The respondent will craft an audio response, and a good-humored tech person will direct the whole presentation. At least it should break up the monotony of some of these panels.

the writing cure

When I was in high school, I'd write when I needed to. For reasons unknown to me, and commented upon by teachers for reasons also unknown to me, my sentences and paragraphs all came together relatively free of semantic and syntactical errors. I didn't pursue creative writing, letter writing, diary keeping, or any other great skill-honing crafts. I actually never started writing for fun until I was out of my undergraduate program (which was also the time that I started reading things I figured I had missed in college and before: Faulkner, Nabokov, Dostoevsky, Hurston, and similar fare). It was a year or so out of school, after traveling and moving around, that I started writing letters to people--in a way that was usually more fulfilling for me, and always just a riot.

Then, I entered an MA program. I was still surprised to hear that my writing was "good," "cogent," "fluid," "readable" and such. But, writing was not a problem--even as it became a chore, which means it became an object of procrastination, which means that a tiny little wedge of despair had been gently inserted into the process.

Then (brief biographical aside), I moved to a huge city, taught some community college, moved to a smaller city and taught some more CC, and finally entered a PhD program where I was longing to write and to express myself. Well, I felt so alive during coursework, and I finally was more thrilled than confused to hear that my writing exhibited some talent. Enter, of course, preliminary exams, prospectus, and diss. Somehow, in a matter of only about 2 years, all of the joy of writing and thinking and reading and living-the-critical-life was sucked out of me. What I have not been able to understand, though , is that, as the fun and spark was replaced by doubt and despair, I was still given the highest accolades and embarrassingly positive feedback from committee members who are important-names-in-the-field.

Since then, all writing has been a struggle. I get the creepy crawlies in my flesh and on my skin as I search in vain for the right clever phrases and bone-jarring insights. They never come, of course. Yet, I send out the occasional essay that has received more excruciating attention than a journal article ever should. And I get back the mixed reviews and the rejections that can't quite explain what's wrong, and the resubmissions that are returned as the editorships change hands. And the doubt and despair becomes the sickness that consumes me.

And just when I feel that the case is terminal, that writing will never be fun, that I am doomed to this malaise and this unhealthy relationship to what once was a fun craft, I decide that I should take a crack at this blogging business. I mean, if millions and millions of people can sign up every day and just do it, then certainly I can too. And maybe, hopefully, writing can be fun again, and the insights may start to flow again, and I can find the me that I lost along the way. And like a sulfur spring, maybe soaking in the blogosphere, and writing for me more than others, will be my cure.

in the zone or in a haze?

The new semester is about to start and I'm feeling very positive about it. I feel so calm and collected that it's freaking me out a bit. Usually I micromanage my syllabi (and overstock it) to the point that everything is in its neat little place. This usually results in having to cut and paste and edit everything on the fly. So, this semester I've produced "loose" syllabi--and it makes me happy. Of course, maximizing contingency and emergent themes should freak me out. But it hasn't. And that sort of freaks me out.

vital statistics

Number of dogs my partner and I have: 2

Number of dogs who sleep in the bed: 2

Number of times dogs were up before 6am this morning: 3

Average number of times per week one of the humans ends up on the couch: 6

Number of courses I'm teaching this semester: 2

Days until they start: 6

Number of syllabi finished: 0

Number of T.A.s in my auditorium-sized class: 2

Days I have left to get them the syllabus, according to my promise: 0

Number of my T.A.s who probably have a better publishing record than I do: 2

Number of projects (writing and domestic) I wanted to complete this break: 6

Number completed: 1

Number given half-hearted attention to: 1

Number of candidates my department is interviewing next week: 2

Number of tenure-track positions I hold: 0

Number of tenure-track positions I've been interviewed for: 0

Percentage less my salary is than second-lowest paid department colleague: 27

Percentage of $1000 faculty bonuses I received last month: 0

Amount of retroactive 4% faculty raises I received last month: 0

My department rank this year in number of student credit hours taught: 2

My rank last year: 1

Type of computer I use: iMac

Book I'm currently reading: The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America

Favorite magazine: Harper's

Band playing right now as I write: Neutral Milk Hotel

why the title?

When I started setting up this blog, I ran into the two contradictory impulses (some would say neuroses) that seem to run my everyday life: the need to have everything just so and the inability to finish things. I think I must have a combination of obsessive compulsive disorder and adult ADD. Anyway, I stressed out over coming up with a good name that reflected my personality or my academic work or my clever ability to play with words or my self-congratulatory knowledge of cultural minutiae. Then I just decided that I needed something, anything, so i could get started here. I sometimes jot down funny phrases that I find embedded in those spam mail gibberish messages--something that is full of shockingly beautiful sets of adjacent words. So, I found one of these lists and decided I would name my blog after the first one that sort of struck me. I think I saw "kinesthesis breakthrough" first, though I also saw "befogging feminism cheesecake" and "arisen mediocre" at about the same time. The one I picked seemed more encouraging for some reason.